Lady, Go Die! Read online

  Finally the clerk said, “What about your, uh, friend?”

  “Recognize him?” I asked.

  “Yes. That is, uh, Poochie. He’s Sidon’s resident beachcomber. He has a shack on the water, just outside town.”

  Poochie showed no signs of any of this registering. He wasn’t unconscious, though, and had a goofy, puffy smile going. It widened whenever he looked up at Velda.

  “He got hurt,” I said, which was all the explanation I was in the mood to give out.

  “Oh, dear. Did he?”

  Cripes, didn’t this jerk have eyes?

  “Is Doc Moody still in town?” I asked. Moody had been a drinking buddy of my old man’s, on our visits to Sidon. And I’d tossed a few back with the doc on my last solo sojourn.

  “Why, yes he is. Should I call him?”

  “There’s an idea.” I dug out a five and tossed it to him, the way you would a fish to a seal. “Give the doc my name—he’ll remember it—and when he gets here, send him up to my room.”

  Right now I was praying the good doc would be sober enough to see straight.

  “Yes, Mr. Hammer,” the clerk said, and reached out a skinny, bony hand for the telephone.

  The Sidon Arms had three floors and no elevator. We walked Poochie slowly up the wide lobby stairs and for the first time since we’d made the trek from the alley, the little guy moaned.

  Velda said, “It’ll be all right, Poochie. It’ll be fine.”

  My room was 2-A and Velda’s was 2-B. The rooms were identical—dresser, wardrobe, a couple chairs, double bed, nightstand, no closet, no bath. That was at the end of the hall. Velda went down there to fill a pitcher with warm water and I set Poochie in the more comfortable of the chairs. It was upholstered and had some padding. While she cleaned him up, I went back down to the lobby. The clerk told me Doc Moody was on his way, and I made my way out to the parking lot behind the hotel and got our luggage and brought it up.

  Poochie seemed to be coming into focus as I hauled our bags in.

  “I think I better give Poochie my bed,” I said, standing next to her as she bent dabbing a washcloth gently onto our guest’s battered face. She was in a white blouse and a blue pleated skirt and was the kind of nurse you dreamed to get.

  “You can sleep with me in my room, if you like.” She flashed me the sweetest smile.

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. You know me, Mike—I don’t stand on ceremony. And speaking of ceremonies, there’s a justice of the peace in this burg, isn’t there? Wonder if he makes house calls like your doctor friend?”

  “You’re no fun at all,” I told her. I leaned in and got our charge’s attention. “What was that about, Poochie?”

  He smiled. It was like Dopey smiling at Snow White.

  “What did Dekkert want with you, Poochie? Why did those creeps give you the Third Degree and then some?”

  He shook his head just a little. “Yellow-haired lady.”

  “What yellow-haired lady?”

  “They say she’s gone. I live down the beach.”

  “Down the beach from the yellow-haired lady?”

  A little nod, then a wince at the pain it caused.

  I asked, “Who is she?”

  “Not nice. Not very nice.”

  “They think you saw something, because you live near where she lives?”

  Another little nod. Another wince.

  Velda said, “Better lay off with the twenty questions, Mike.”

  I stood, put my hands on my hips.

  “Some gal with yellow hair is missing, and Dekkert wants to know where she went. Judging by the beating he gave Poochie here, Dekkert wants to know bad.”

  Velda frowned. “Apart from any official police interest, you think?”

  “Not necessarily. Typical of these towns to perform their rubber-hose symphonies well away from the station house and out of uniform. That alley makes perfect sense. This town rolls up its sidewalks at sundown, this time of year, with no tourists around.”

  “Almost no tourists,” Velda said.

  There was a knock.

  “There’s the doc now,” Velda said.

  “Is it?” I asked softly.

  I went to the bed where I had tossed my suitcase. I opened it, and slipped the .45 Colt automatic out of its sling where it slept like a baby on my clean underwear. But babies can wake up screaming...

  I thumbed off the safety and kicked the slide back and went to the door.

  “Yeah?” I said, pointing the snout right where my visitor would be standing.

  “It’s Moody!” a gruff, age-colored voice called. “This better be important, Mike. I was watching wrestling.”

  Maybe he’d been down in the bar and I’d missed him.

  I raised the snout of the .45, undid the night latch on the door, and opened it. Moody stepped in wearing a wrinkled suit and no tie with his Gladstone bag in hand. He was heavy-set but not fat, white-haired, with a friendly face whose drink-reddened nose held up a pair of wire-rim bifocal glasses.

  “So it’s our resident beachcomber, is it?” he said idly, giving me a nod to acknowledge my presence. Not much of a greeting, considering after our last evening together I had paid for his night of drinking and hauled his booze-sodden carcass home.

  He did more than just nod at Velda. He gave her the kind of smiling, appreciative once-over old men can get away with, taking in a good-looking young gal. He shook his head, sighed, remembering times long past, and gave me a frown that said, You lucky bastard.

  I clicked the safety on the .45 and shoved it in my waistband.

  The doc looked Poochie over for a good ten minutes. He didn’t ask him anything that couldn’t be answered with a nod or a shake of the head. He approved of Velda’s first-aid routine, but had Poochie stand for us to get him out of his ragged clothes and down to his skivvies. The doc went over the cuts and abrasions with alcohol-soaked cotton balls while the little guy squirmed.

  Then he gave Poochie a shot and had us walk him over to the bed, where we got him under the covers. Within seconds, the little guy was snoring.

  “I don’t mind saving his tail,” I said to the doc, “but I am not sleeping with that character. Should I get another room?”

  “I’ll have Percy on the desk send up a rollaway for you, Mike. Somebody needs to be in the room with him tonight.”

  “How bad is it?”

  Moody shrugged. “Surprisingly, not near as bad I would expect. No teeth missing. No indication of internal bleeding. No broken ribs, at least apparently. We’ll see if we can get Poochie to come in for some X-rays, tomorrow or the next day. But I will say, it’s probably a good thing you came along.”

  I grunted a laugh. “Dekkert is an old pro at delivering police beatings. He knows just how to mete out punishment and stop short of creating evidence of police brutality.”

  “A bad apple, all right. He’s the deputy chief, but really, he runs things. Chief Beales is local and that helps him get elected. But Beales is soft, a figurehead.”

  “Corrupt, though?”

  “Oh, certainly. You haven’t been around in a while, Mike. Things have changed in Sidon.”

  “Care to fill me in?”

  “Maybe later. Over a drink, perhaps.”

  “Sure, Doc. Listen, is Poochie here slow? You know, simple?”

  “You mean retarded? No. But he is on the slow side. I suspect he suffered a trauma, perhaps physical, perhaps mental, when he was young. He’s something of an idiot savant.”

  “Well, is he an idiot or not, Doc?”

  He chuckled. “I mean to say, he has an artistic gift that may surprise you. Ask to see his shell collection, while you’re around.”

  That sounded like a blast.

  I asked, “You know of any yellow-haired women in town?”

  “Why, certainly. We even have a redhead and a brunette or two. And at the moment, we have a particularly lovely black-haired beauty.”

  He nodded to Velda, gathered h
is Gladstone bag, and took his leave.

  “Nice old boy,” Velda said.

  “I like him fine. I just wouldn’t want to live in a town where his sobriety stood between me and a scalpel.”

  “That’s mean, Mike. Of course, there’s nothing worse than a reformed drunk.”

  “Is that what I am? A reformed drunk?”

  “Mike,” Velda smiled, her voice low so as not to disturb our slumbering guest, “you’re not a reformed anything.”

  She gathered her overnight bag, and Poochie’s dirty, bloody clothes, saying, “I’ll wash these.” Then she blew me a kiss and was gone.

  Almost immediately a knock at the door had me figuring she might have changed her mind. But I took my .45 along, anyway.

  It was the rollaway.

  The clerk himself brought it—they were clearly short on help before the season started. He seemed to want a tip, but I reminded him about the fin I’d already slipped him.

  I had the rollaway unfolded and ready when the phone on the nightstand rang and I got to it before it could disturb Poochie. Not that the sedative the doc gave him would be easily pierced.

  “Hammer,” I said.

  “Mr. Hammer,” a mid-range, unctuous voice intoned, “this is Chief of Police Bernard Beales.”

  Well, whoop de do.

  “Chief Beales,” I said. “A pleasure.”

  “Is it, Mr. Hammer?”

  “Yeah, and I’m glad you called. Are you aware your deputy chief and two of his pals were beating up a poor little local guy they call Poochie? Right out in public? I had to put a stop to it. Of course, I didn’t know they were cops. They were acting more like a goon squad.”

  “I see. Is that how you’re going to play it?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Do I have to come over to the hotel and have you brought in, Mr. Hammer?”

  “No. In fact, I wouldn’t advise that. But I’ll be glad to come by some time in the morning and straighten this matter out myself.”

  “You would give yourself up?”

  “Why, is there a charge leveled against me?”

  “No. Not at this time.”

  “Fine. Then let’s talk about it in the morning. I had kind of a busy evening.”

  “First thing in the morning, then.”

  “No, Chiefie. Some time in the morning. I’m on vacation. I want to have a nice breakfast and who knows? I might want to take a constitutional along your lovely beach. Surely you want to let me know, as a tourist and the backbone of local economy, that I can come to Sidon and be confident of having a nice getaway.”

  “Some time tomorrow morning then,” he huffed, and hung up.

  But I said, “Nighty night, Chiefie,” just the same.

  Time to beat the sheets. I’d had enough vacation fun for one evening.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Poochie’s shack was a dilapidated affair, rudely constructed from boards drifted in off the tide, that probably never survived a winter without being blown down at least twice. Coming down from a dune, you could see its weathered tin roof displaying faded ads for hot dogs and soft drinks. Trailing after the little guy, Velda and I were pooped by the time we reached his place—we parked the car a good mile away and had to walk the remainder of the distance in ankle-deep sand.

  We’d been up around an hour and a half. Back in my hotel room, Poochie had woken with a start and a cry that shook me from a deep sleep and a dream that was a hell of a lot better than sharing a room with a battered beachcomber. But he had settled down quick. He seemed to know that I’d rescued him, and accepted me as his new friend Mike, unquestioningly. I called Velda and she brought around his washed and still a little damp clothes. He grinned at her goofily and just as unquestioningly accepted her as his new friend Velda.

  Poochie wolfed down scrambled eggs and bacon and hash browns at a café across the street next to the Sidon Palace, the movie house. Velda and I had the same fare and were damn near as hungry as our guest. I was amazed by his recuperative powers—his face was splotched yellow and purple and his eyes and lips remained puffy, but his manner was happy-go-lucky.

  There had been no conversation at breakfast about last night. For Poochie, right now was all there was. He was sitting in a booth with his new pals Mike and Velda, gobbling down good grub, and what had been or would be was irrelevant. Not the worst outlook in the world.

  I said we wanted to take him back to his shack, and he said swell, but he needed to pick up some hamburger at the grocery store. We did that, Velda spotting him a buck when Poochie’s pockets turned out to be empty. No surprise.

  We drove a mile or so till he motioned us to pull over, like a kid who needed a john, and soon we were hiking it in the sand.

  In a simple pleated navy skirt and light blue blouse with a sweater slung round her shoulders, my dark-haired secretary looked sexier than any bikini babe this beach had ever seen. Me, I looked like a city slicker in my rumpled suit, even without a tie and with my hat off. But after last night, I needed to go out heeled, and I needed the suitcoat to conceal the .45 in its shoulder sling.

  The morning was bright and cool, the ocean breeze refreshing on your face, sun reflecting off shimmering sand, gulls swooping and squawking, the tide lapping, blue ocean glittering, the air salty and fresh, the beach scattered with driftwood and shells, clam, oyster, periwinkle. Good pickings for a beachcomber like Poochie.

  Just outside the shack, Velda and I sat down on two old crates while Poochie ducked inside. In an eye blink the little guy came back out carrying a couple of cats. Scraggly, wild things, they were, but they swarmed all over him in the friendliest way, licking his face and rubbing themselves against his neck. He spread out the pound of hamburger on its butcher paper for them and they dug in together.

  When I looked up at Poochie, he was facing the ocean, breathing the salt air, a battered little guy who owned the world. “Ain’t it good here, Mike?”

  “Swell.”

  And it was, as far as it went. But what he called home was a barrel to hold fish heads, three crude fishing poles set against the side of the shack, an ancient wheelbarrow to gather shells, two cats for company, and a broken-down shanty to keep the rain off his head.

  “Come on inside,” he said brightly. “I got lots of things I want to show you.”

  We followed him in, ducking our heads as we went. He put a match to an oil lamp and the pale orange light threw flickering shadows on the wall. A homemade table sat in the middle, around which were four more crates for chairs. Why he bothered with four, I don’t know. I doubt if he ever had company. A single bunk was built against the far wall, covered with somebody’s cast-off quilt. Behind the table a stove of iron pipes was overlaid on some bricks with a firewood bin next to it. For utensils there were two pots, some reclaimed and polished cans, several old knives and forks, and a wooden salad spoon.

  What interested me most was the half-carved shell on the makeshift table. Beside it was a well-worn shoemaker’s leather knife. I picked up the shell and ran my hands over the picture carved there. It was beautiful—a manger scene with an angel in the background. The dog-eared Christmas card it was copied from lay under the knife.

  He was grinning. Where his teeth weren’t yellow, they were black. “Like it, Mike?”

  “You said it,” I grinned at him. “Where did you learn to do this?”

  “In school.” He said it proudly.

  “No kidding?” I couldn’t believe he’d stayed in school long enough to develop this kind of skill. The detail work was fantastic.

  “Yup. That’s where I went when I was little. I remember it real good. I can hardly remember anything else about being a kid except the school. They were good to me there and a priest showed me how to carve wood. I did bad in all my studies, Mike, but not carving. That priest said I had a real talent. Then he got me a shell one day and I carved that. I got plenty of ’em. Look!”

  He pointed to the walls and I whistled under my breath. They were arrayed
on a two-by-four running around three walls, beautiful examples of what a simple mind could do if it concentrated.

  He pointed to some beat-up cabinets below the crude shelving; they probably had been scavenged from the galley of some old boat. “I got lots more. Down here is my private collection.”

  Velda whispered to me: “Idiot savant.”

  Why did everybody keep saying that! I knew this guy was an idiot.

  But like Doc Moody said, an idiot with a touch of genius. Each shell was a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Some were carved into animals, others were seascapes, all worked into the rounded exterior of a shell. The pale light of the lantern hardly brought out the exquisite pink and cream tones. I knew people in the city who would pay top dollar for these.

  I asked, “Ever sell any, Poochie?”

  “Sure, I sell ’em. The stuff I keep on that one shelf, those are for sale.” He pointed. “That’s how I get all my money.”

  His little shack wasn’t exactly a showroom. “How much do you get, Poochie? And who buys them?”

  “Oh, a nice man from the city comes by and gives me a whole dollar a piece for ’em. That’s pretty darn good, ain’t it, Mike?”

  “That’s good, all right, but don’t you sell any more until I see the guy that buys them.”

  “Why... sure, Mike. He’ll be here in a few days.”

  “Great. Let me act as your agent. All great artists need agents.”

  “You think I’m a great artist, Mike?”

  “I sure do. How often does he come around, this guy?”

  “Always around this time every month he comes.”

  I would kick the crap out of the bastard for taking advantage of Poochie like that. A buck a piece and he was probably raking in a hundred per, anyway.

  “I’ll negotiate a new price.”

  Velda was walking around the little room, looking at the individual shells on the shelf, breathless at the sheer beauty of them.

  I got up and put a hand on her shoulder. “I want to take a walk up the beach. Care to come?”

  She shook her head, the dark tresses bouncing. “No. You go ahead. I’ve had my fill of walking on sand for a while. I’ll just stick around here and enjoy the view.”